More and more games are popping up on the Steem blockchain. While they are designed to play, they are of course created so that the creators can make a profit out it. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion. The creators could be seen as investors and for sure they do want to have a positive ROI! These kinds of things does push the Steem blockchain further!

But can they be used to increase your Steem Power?

It all depends how soon you did discover the game! The earlier you did invest, the more chance you will have on a profit!
I am involved in 5 games on the Steem blockchain! And for the moment I do have a very huge negative ROI and also not!

At the moment my balance is -185.53 Steem and -11.356 SBD. That is the real balance! If I do look at the virtual balance things do look more promising.
In my real balance I did leave out the money which is still invested and which could be recovered. Nor do I take into account the value of my Steemmonsters collection, which is $168.66, worth 432 Steem. If I would be able to sell them all.

Here are the more detailed number about the games!

Steemmonsters

Well I was late at the party and I did over invest. Also the changes the owners did, aren’t in favor of the smaller players. Steemmonsters is the biggest leak in steem which I do have at the moment.
My overall investment in the game is 569.181 steem and 10.71 SBD. But since 2 seasons I have stopped with investing into it. I do now play it to mine steem. Not that is going at a fast rate, but each day I am recovering small bits of the loss. And if I can pull another legendary on the road to profit, that would speed things up! The golden foil Sacred Unicorn was a blessing! But glad that I did sell it for 130 Steem.

On the income side, I did sell cards for 185.382 Steem and 2.836 SBD. Also an extra way of income are the upvotes they do give when you are posting about steemmonsters. For me this upvote is around $0.36. So each post would give me around 0.75 steem.
Let’s say that I do write 4 to 5 post per season and that bags another 4 to 5 steem per season. We cannot neglect this!

Also my investment still has a virtual value. According the to the steemmonsters discord bot, the total value of my collection is $168 or 432 steem. If I would add this to the balance I would have a small profit. The question is will I ever get that amount of Steem for my collection? Probably not! So lots of IFS and that why I do prefer to leave it out of the books.

Magicdice

Magicdice was the second game I did jump on. And in contrast to Steemmonsters, @magicdice is a profitable investment for me.
On the outgoing side I did wager 626.483 Steem and 14.582 SBD. A rather big investment. But my luck here was that I did bring a whale to the game, which did deliver me 103 steem and lots of Magics (the native coin of Magicdice).
In total I do have a positive balance on the steem side (+30.782) and a negative balance on the SBD side (-2.042).
But I will get everyday a small amount of steem in return as didivend for holding Magic tokens.
Each day I do play for around 1 steem, 10 bets of 0.1 steem. Depending on the mood I do play the over 91 or under 10. After 10 loosing bets I do stop, after a winning bet I do stop also. Even if it is my first.
The daily dividend at the moment is on average 0.15 steem. So that is an extra 1 steem per week.
If you never have played it and still want to take a shot, feel free to use my referral link: MagicDice

Steembet

@steem-bet was next. I am only playing a few times a week. It is not as superior as magicdice is. You can only bet on the under and you will be forced to use the Chrome browser.
This because they have decided not to use steemconnect but keychain which is for the moment only available for the Chrome Browser!

The advantage they do have over magicdice is that they do quickly respond on questions on their discord channel. Just like Magicdice you do earn some SteemBetTokens when throwing the dice. The positive side here is that you will earn much more SBT than Magic for a 1 steem bet. I do believe that you will get 50 SBD in contrast to the 12.5 Magic.

The biggest set back here is that it is not clear yet how you will be rewarded for holding SBT tokens, which is pretty clear at Magic Dice. As long as they don’t have a whitepaper it is better not to focus on the SBTs.
So playing there and to see it as an investment is a gamble at the moment but one I am willing to take!
If you want to try it out here is the link: Steem-bet!

For the moment I am in the green STEEM wise (+2.528) but in the red SBD wise (-1.44).

Drugwars

For the moment @drugwars is probably the hottest game on the steem blockchain. The idea is to build out your drug empire. There are 2 ways to do this. One is to use the resources you do produce every day and start to increase the production. Or take the lazy and more expensive way and just purchase the upgrade.
There are 2 possible way to earn money. On one side you will be rewarded for the drug production each day and the other way is to invest the drugs in the bank. At the moment both possibilities are getting 50% of the daily payout. The daily payout is based on the money which drugwars did receive for the instant upgrade. Each day 6% is available for the daily payout.

I was lucky to enter this game early, but in this case being early wasn’t enough. If we are going to look at the ROI, the people who did invest some steem but not too much are the winners at the moment. The ones who did invest a lot will have a harder road to getting a positive ROI if they ever will!
I decided to invest quite a lot compared to my Steem holdings but it did pay off. My investment was 80.839 Steem. Most of these investments were made on the first day that the games was launched. It did take 10 days to turn into a positive investment.
At the moment I do have a profit of 37.501 steem. But because I am also part of a Cartel, I will have to withdraw 14.5 steem from this. Still more than 20 steem earned. And each day the profit if going up.
I will not invest anymore steem into the game! I will try to work with my daily production of drugs, weapons and alcohol.

If you haven’t tried it out. Maybe take a look at it, but I wouldn’t invest to much steem in it! Stepping in now and play it for free will be probably much more rewarding than to invest steem in it! I doubt it that a positive ROI is possible anymore!

Steemslotgames

I was also early with @steemslotgames. I did increase my changes by giving away a part of my referral bonus. So that steemians with a reputation above 60 would have a risk free bet!
My profit here is a solid 112.59 Steem. Yeah!
Multiple times per week they are running a quiz via their steem blog, which can earn you some free steem to play with.
Only if I do get some free steem, I will play it. Still it is an addictive game and I can’t wait until they create more slot games. It is fun to see the reels turning and stopping! You could be lucky but shouldn’t count on it! I do know success stories but also people who gambled it all away! So be carefull!

Moonsteem

The newest game I am playing. It launched officially yesterday!
It is too early to tell if it will have a positive ROI but it looks a great game. It is a game for the real gamblers. The idea is simple: wager an amount of steemies and select a cash out! Each 5 second a new game starts.
The course does start at 1X and if the crash occurs higher than your cash out bet, you will get the steemies back including the multiplier! They also offer an easy way to set up your own martingale scheme! Which of course can result into a bankruptcy!
Last night I did win 850K steemies which is 0.85 steem with my Martingale scheme!
My total investment is 12 steem. 10 steem in invested in backing the house and the other 2 steem is used to play.
So after one day I do have a loss of -10.75 steem. But we will have to give the game some time to evolve! I do want to have a positive ROI on this game before the end of March! We will see if this is feasible!
The best way to start is to login to moonsteem via steemconnect and to upvote a post of them. Upvoting a post or comment will give you some free steemies to play with! Maybe you can turn this into a profit!

Conclusion

Yes you can earn some steem with playing the games above but you need to be carefull when and how much to invest! Most games do reward the early investors, but we also have seen examples of players who just did invest too much!
While I do see most games as an investment or a vehicle to give my steem account a small push in the back, the focus should be on playing the game and not the investment part of the game! If both could be combined that is just great!

Cheers,
Peter